Dive Brief:
- Mansfield University of Pennsylvania will lay off 12 faculty members and place four academic programs in moratorium starting next fall due to state aid cuts and enrollment declines.
- The state school is one of five in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education that warned of layoffs for next year: Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, and Edinboro universities are the others, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
- The university’s president, Fran Hendricks, said the cuts were not just because of financial issues, but also due to declining enrollment and duplication issues.
Dive Insight:
The president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, Kenneth Mash, said that explaining the cuts in strategic terms was disingenuous. The programs put into moratorium will be the business program; the education and special education programs, but not music education; and an online master’s degree program for school library and information technologies. The layoffs will come from those programs, plus the sociology and anthropology programs placed in moratorium last year.